Unit 3 | Fiqh

Allah and His Prophet have told us to do some things and they have told us not to do other things. The scholars of Islam have taught us how to do our everyday acts in the way Allah and His Prophet want us to do them. The science that teaches us how to do these acts is called fiqh. One ... Read More »

Purification (taharah) is the special way a Muslim cleans his body and his clothes. As Muslims, there are two types of purification we are concerned about, especially when we pray. First, we must purify ourselves from najasah (impurity or filth). Najasah is an impure material. Impure things are unclean things that have to be washed away with water. We will ... Read More »

When we purify ourselves from hadath or najasah in normal circumstances, we must use water. Allah has made water readily available in natural resources; we have water from the sky and from bodies of water on the earth. Water has three special characteristics: clear color, special taste and a special smell. Four types of water Read More »

Some things are considered filth and have to be removed in a particular way. There are some things that Islam considers to be impure (najis). Impure is different from dirty. Some things are dirty, but they are pure. An example of a dirty thing is rotten food. Some things seem clean, but they are najis. An example of this is ... Read More »

When we want to pray, we must make wudu. Wudu requires an intention and some washing and some wiping. Fard and Sunnah of Wudu In the next section, you will learn that 6 of the acts of wudu are fard. All the rest of the acts are sunnah. The acts that are fard must be performed and they must be ... Read More »

We saw in Lesson 3.1.4 that wudu has many acts. However, all of those acts are not fard or wajib. The fard parts of anything we do are called its arkan. The singular of arkan is rukn. So wudu has 6 fard acts which are 6 arkan. We explained in Preliminaries that a fard act is one that must always ... Read More »

Just as wudu removes minor hadath from our body, ghusl removes major hadath from the body. Remember that we said major hadath is like black paint that covers the whole body? Well, when somebody has major hadath, they have to make ghusl to become pure again. Making ghusl is just like taking a shower, but with some rules. The Full ... Read More »

Excellent, we’ve learned how to make wudu! We learned what is fard in wudu, and what is sunnah. We learned that we must be very careful to perform the fards of wudu correctly so that our wudu will be valid or correct. But do you know when it becomes necessary to make wudu? What breaks our wudu? Let’s learn it ... Read More »

When you do certain things, it breaks your wudu, as we saw in Lesson 3.1.8 (What Breaks Wudu). Similarly, some things break ghusl. Three of these are the same for men and women. But three of them are only for women. When someone doesn’t have ghusl, we say he has major hadath on him. Remember that major hadath is like ... Read More »